Darkling
by CrepuscularLullaby
Summary: The Darklings bathed the land in their wicked essence, smothered the light until all that remained was black. In the aftermath of the war, the realm's princess was imprisoned to serve the malevolent fallen. Now, fractured and whittled down to her very core, Usagi must find the strength to craft her own escape or lose herself to the devil's flesh and blood in the darkest ways.


_**Darkling**_

_**Prologue**_

The moon was an elusive entity at best, a renowned myth at worst. Lore surrounding the silver sphere bled into every primeval tale, every bed-time story, and in some ways, it had infused itself within the very core of their existence; the unseen being earned a love so vehement that it rivaled that of the people's love for their rulers. Not a soul–if they did possess such things–had ever known why. Yet, their ardor remained untested, especially during the Lunar Fortnight: a celebration created to commemorate the realm's idolatry of the moon. The coming of the season had always brought with it a sense of indomitable strength and unwavering optimism, intense pleasure and comfortable hedonism, wintry beauty and an ivory blanketed land so unlike the one they were accustomed to.

For the Luxlings, there was ineffable sense of invigoration in being enamored of an unreachable entity. Surely if they had spent eons dwelling on such a thing it spoke of their strength as an untested race, of their perpetual success.

And as all good things met their ultimate demise, the master race was eventually faced with an apocalypse of their own, one that sealed their legacy behind a veil of shadows and smog, and left them to the wolves of a treacherous winter. Their death was brought on by a dance of arrogance and ignorance regarding the thorn in their side: the Darklings. Thought to be innocuous in existence, a cult that would never amount to anything, they were permitted to grow unsupervised and by the time the danger of such a group was noticed, the pestilence was flourishing and thriving on the impending chaos.

Overnight, they thrust the realm of their birth into an ocean of anarchy and blood. One moment, Luxlings slept in their feathery canopies, dreaming of nothing as fate would have them do, and the next the star-adorned universe trapped behind their eyelids was stolen, only to be replaced by the crimson kiss of death. In mere hours, the pride of the heavens was a mere twinkle in the night's eye. Entire cities had ceased to breathe, and their residents became nothing more than withering corpses floating in rivers of their own lost lives. Ethereal beauty had been reduced to grotesque elegance; the children of nature were returned to their roots.

All but one.

She was the heir apparent, for her mother had not endured the ferocity of childbirth, nor had her father survived one of the rare epidemics that ravaged the realm. Born of prized golden blood, the hunt of a hare, and the coming of a Lunar Fortnight, the child was bestowed upon the name of Usagi: the rabbit. As a rose would, she blossomed under the gentle care of the staff, prospered amongst the controlled peace of the palace, and eventually grew into the name of her birth. She became the swift rabbit of innocent pulchritude, and the first child of the moon.

Such a title was the only name befitting of a creature as herself, and the only name that accurately recounted her celestial beauty. She had stolen the essence of the moon, every fiber of her fragile being was coursing with lunar light. Her hair was a collection of illustrious silver moonbeams, and the liquid platinum locks tumbled down her shoulders, flowing the length of her spine, and came to rest at her calves. She often matched her dresses to her luxurious tresses, choosing airy gray, gossamer fabrics that hardly concealed her most intimate parts. Of course, her handmaidens had always thrown numerous cloaks over her, chiding the young princess and encouraging her to dress in a more appropriate manner...pleas that fell on deaf ears. Usagi's guileless cerulean eyes knew not of the world's corruptness, nor of its tendency to defile those who were pure of heart. And such a naivety was perhaps the quality that made her so beloved and so easy to break.

In wake of the apocalypse that plunged the realm into an insuperable dark, she was the only creature who escaped the wrath of shadow. The gilded cage she returned to in the evening hours–or her land's equivalent of such a time–had risen to the status of fortress in the hours that marked the end of her world; she was safe even when the rest of her kind lie still.

"Am I alone?" She begged an answer of the empty room, hoping that she might find herself in the company of another.

Curled up in the bay window with an over-stuffed cushion cradling her body, Usagi pressed her forehead against the glass, letting her warm breath coat the surface in a humid frost. With worry spilling from her ocean-blue eyes in the form of tears, she had searched for what seemed like weeks for any signs of life that stirred in the charred fields below, only to come up with nothing time after time. She liked to think that perhaps a lone Luxling wandered in a field not encapsulated in the sliver of the land she could see. The flame of hope burning in her breast kept her flush against the window even when she desired to frequent another location.

"How could things have ever gotten so out of hand?"

Peeling herself away from her post, she slid off the windowsill. A slim foot poked out from the diaphanous layers of her skirts and kissed the floor tentatively. The cool tiles responded by embracing her skin with a chilling touch, sending shivers shooting through her limbs and up to her veins. Her wings tingled with the sudden energy, paper-thin, pink appendages fluttering beneath the curtain of her hair with a certain desire to fly.

Usagi padded towards the ornate double-doors. The twin slabs of wood were covered in a sea of swirling murals that told the tale of a Luxling's life, entrapping that certain sense of elegant gore in numerous lines and varying shades of gray. Resting her hand on one of the crafted bronze handles and giving it a light shake, she smiled slightly when it refused to cave to her ministrations; she was safe so long as the door remained locked.

With her safety no longer uncertain in her mind, she glided towards the window once more, feet whispering against the tiled floors, but suddenly veered herself off course. Without the slightest bit of hesitation, she cut a sharp corner and abandoned her quest to retake her position at the window, setting her gaze on the canopied bed placed against the far left wall.

The furniture had remained undisturbed as the realm fell to ashes around its home, and it remained ever dutiful though it had received not the slightest bit of attention until that single moment. Beneath the wispy veil that was no heavier than a child's breath, her ivory and rose coverlets rested, inviting her to lay with them. Usagi had not slept in her bed in ages, and thus was unable to resist such a pull. In a matter of moments, she had separated the covers from the underlying cream sheets, sliding into the empty space between as though she were a wave of warmth settling into the lacuna of a bone. Her pounding, worrisome cranium sank into the cloud-cover pillows that dotted the head of the bed, and soon she found herself under the spell of sleep.

She rested soundly through the night, though the sky's flat gray never once wavered to cue a specific time. It wasn't until she heard the creaking moan of her door being opened did she wake, and by then it was too late to alter the course of fate.

The Darklings found her.

_He _found her.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Author's Note: And that concludes the first 'chapter' of my first fanfiction! I know it's rather short, but I promise that coming chapters will be much longer in length. As this is my first attempt, I'd love to hear how it went, so please leave me a little comment or two. Thanks for reading! <strong>_


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